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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26809915">Technical Difficulties</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullharvester/pseuds/Skullharvester'>Skullharvester</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>One-Shots (Ratchet &amp; Clank) [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ratchet &amp; Clank</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 12:01:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,731</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26809915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullharvester/pseuds/Skullharvester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Nefarious isn't a physician, unless robots count.  Do they?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Victor Von Ion/Original Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>One-Shots (Ratchet &amp; Clank) [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2120196</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Technical Difficulties</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Enjoy and have fun!  </p><p>If you liked this tale, please drop me a kudos and/or a comment to let me know if you'd like to see more!  </p><p>Thank you, and have a wonderful night!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>        The grating sound of Victor Von Ion grinding his loose, rusted jaw piece had been making Dr. Nefarious’ skin crawl for the past several minutes, and finally he decided he couldn’t put up with the fidgeting anymore.  He was going to speak his mind to the massive crimson warbot, even if he could probably crush Nefarious’ head in with just a finger and his thumb.  Any moment now…</p><p>        <strong><em>Skreee… Skreeeeeee…  Skree…</em></strong></p><p>        Nefarious’ eyelid kept twitching at the racket, and his exhaustion made his patience even thinner.  What time was it, anyway?  It had to be past midnight at the very least.</p><p>        <strong><em>Skreeeeeee… SkreeeEEEeeeeEEEE…</em></strong></p><p>        “STOP!”  the doctor slammed the handle of his wrench against the table next to him, gripping the tool so tightly that it was cutting off circulation in his fingers until he eased up on it.</p><p>        The gesture didn’t startle Victor.  Instead, in a very unnerving way, his head just rotated slowly until his eyes met with the organic’s.  The way the warbot’s eyes glowed bright orange in the dim lighting of the nightclub’s backroom gave him an even more off-putting aura.</p><p>        <em>Be confident</em>, Nefarious told himself, returning his gaze with narrowed eyes.  <em>You’re the one in control here.</em>  His other hand’s fingers subtly wrapped around a specific cord connected to the robot’s sisterboard, just to be safe.</p><p>        Victor made a sound that resembled a huff, then faced forward again, propping his head up under his palm, portraying his boredom and impatience with the operation.  Nefarious was only glad that he was holding that broken jaw of his in place now, so he wouldn’t have to hear it.</p><p>        “Thanks for fixin’ me up, doc.”  Those were the first real words Victor had said to Nefarious the entire time he had started the repair work.  Before, it was nothing but the occasional grunt to express discomfort or acknowledgment.</p><p>        The doctor hummed, then said, “Well, we’re on the same team now, I suppose.”  He inserted his wrench back inside of the open hatch on Victor’s back, securing a piston back in place. </p><p>        It was fascinating to see so many parts under Victor’s hood, so to speak, that haven’t been on store shelves in <em>decades</em>.  He was running on such an outdated system that Nefarious wasn’t even sure if he could modernize the warbot without utterly erasing who he was. </p><p>        <em>Everything </em>would have to be replaced, assuming their boss Alonzo Drek would actually be willing to foot that kind of bill, and something that Nefarious never cared to delve too deeply into back when he was going to school for robotics was the question of: Were these machines as much of a person as he was?</p><p>        Artificial intelligence over the years had gotten alarmingly advanced across the universe, especially in recent years, and although his teachers assured him that robots were just “very good at emulating personhood, to the point where society opted for the sake of moral comfort to give them more of the same basic rights as organics”, Victor’s sense of sentience was indistinguishable from that of an organic’s from Nefarious’ point of view.  Victor was already starting to remind him of a grumpier, older version of his teammate… former teammate Brax.</p><p>        Truth be told, this was the main reason why Nefarious never finished that one project he kept under a tarp back at his lab in the Galactic Rangers’ headquarters:  The butler he’d already dubbed “Lawrence” back when it was just a head-shaped casing with a circuit board, a CPU, and some loose wires inside. </p><p>        He only powered “Lawrence” on one time, just to see if his work was semi-functional, and the single full conversation he managed to have with what was just a head sitting on his desk was enough to make him almost want to abandon the project immediately.  Not because Lawrence insulted him, which he did, but because he was… <em>too</em> lifelike. </p><p>        Nefarious knew he didn’t program him to have the kind of personality he displayed.  It was just there, like it had a soul of its own.  But machines didn’t have souls, did they?  They weren’t actually people.  They just <em>seemed</em> like people.  The same way pet owners attribute projected personalities onto their animals.</p><p>        …Right?</p><p>        “Squishies don’t usually think of us as teammates,” said Victor, breaking the silence.  “If anything, they usually see us as appliances.  It’s kinda irritatin’.  I ain’t just a heavily-armed toaster.”  Even with the broken jaw, he managed to give a slight, crooked smile over his shoulder.  “Maybe you’re alright, doc.” </p><p>        Victor’s jaw fell off and clattered on the floor.  “Ah crap,” still came through clearly, if not more so without the obstruction, from his vocalizer.  He waved the doctor away when the green-skinned organic reached for the jaw piece.  “Nah, I got it.  You just keep doin’ whatever you was doin’,” he insisted, scooping it up himself, and trying to clip it back into place.</p><p>        “I’m almost done,” Nefarious replied as he went about his business putting the undamaged parts and wiring back in place, now that the pieces water had shorted out had been replaced with whatever the doctor happened to have on hand at the time.</p><p>        The warbot patted his metal kneecaps eagerly, and his exhaust fans whirred, mimicking a alleviated sigh.  “About time.”</p><p>        Nefarious peered up from the warbot’s open back, displeased by his phrasing.  “I’ve been going as fast as I can.”</p><p>        “Oh, yeah, I know, but still…” Victor readjusted his jaw, but now it just sat lopsidedly to the other side.  “All this sittin’ around is makin’ me antsy.”</p><p>        The doctor rolled his eyes, wrapping things up a little faster now before shutting the hatch.  He gave Victor a gentle tap on the back with his wrench.  “I’ll have to submit a request for several replacement parts to Drek, but the important thing is that you can move again. </p><p>“Just take things easy until I’m able to perform a little more maintenance on you.  I wasn’t able to remove all of the rust since I ran out of contact spray, and some of your non-vital parts looked a little… iffy.”</p><p>        Victor spun around in the stool he was sitting on to face Nefarious, palms still resting on his knees as he hunched forward, making it look as if they were in a two-person huddle.  “Uh-huh.”  He tapped a finger against his kneecap, making it obvious that he was thinking.  “Hey, doc?”</p><p>        “Hmm?”</p><p>        “I was wonderin’ if you could help me out with this one other thing.”</p><p>        This was the trouble with being the main tech guy on a team.  Show up to fix one issue, and suddenly you’re bombarded with a thousand other little “while you’re here, could you…” requests that weren’t mentioned until now.</p><p>        Nefarious pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on.  “Yes, Victor?”</p><p>        “Call me Vic.”</p><p>        “<em>Just get to the point</em>.”</p><p>        “Okay.  So, there’s this girl I like.”</p><p>        Nefarious held a hand up.  “I’m going to stop you right there.  I’m not a psychiatrist.”</p><p>        Victor blinked, confused.  “You’re a robot doctor, right?”</p><p>        “Technically: Yes.”</p><p>        “They didn’t teach you robot psychology when you went to school for that?”</p><p>        Which was worse: Listening to the rusty old warbot ramble on about something completely moronic that he couldn’t care less about or admitting that he didn’t know much about a particular subject that he probably should know way more about?</p><p>        “…Go on.”</p><p>        “Anyway, I’ve got it bad for her, doc, but here’s the problem: She’s already seeing my best friend!”  Victor gestured with his hands as he presented two options, “I dunno if I should back off an’ be a good friend, or if I should keep tryin’ ta impress Ri… the lady that I’m into. </p><p>        “I mean, don’t the sayin’ go that: “All is fair in love an’ war?”  Seems like it’d be pretty fair if whoever was the most macho at the time got the girl, right?”</p><p>        Nefarious never expected that anyone would ever look at<em> him</em> and think to themselves: “This is a guy who knows love advice.”  Then again, he may not be an expert in that field in the slightest, yet even he could tell that Victor’s idea of romance was flawed, to put it lightly.</p><p>        “Have you considered asking Rita about her feelings on the matter?” the doctor offered, unable to hide the condescending tone in his own voice.</p><p><em>        “</em>No, why?”  Victor caught his own slip.  “Wait – how did you know Rita was the girl?!”</p><p>        Sometimes Nefarious wondered if something about himself just drew in imbeciles like a magnet because that would explain why he was always surrounded by idiots. </p><p>        “I had to check your drives while I was in the process of fixing you, to make sure there was no critical data loss.  Usually, when someone has a saved image folder and then seven other sub-folders labeled: “Boring Stuff”, they’re hiding something. Very poorly.”</p><p>        The doctor cringed as he recalled suppressed memories of having to navigate the files on Captain Qwark’s work computer to figure out which one out of the latest crop had an embedded virus. </p><p>        Fixing Qwark’s computer over and over during his time with the Galactic Rangers gave Nefarious <em>too</em> deep of an intimate look into his personal interests, and he dreaded to think that he and Qwark were the only two who knew that information.</p><p>        Nefarious forced the embarrassing thoughts right back into the little mental box he kept them in, and stowed them away, along with all the other things he wished he could forget.  “But, yes, I think you should just talk to her directly about how you feel.  I guess if that doesn’t work, you and your friend can go back to clubbing each other over the head like cavemen, or whatever it is you’ve been doing.”</p><p>        “Mostly we just arm-wrestle.”</p><p>        “Yeah, sure, whatever.  But try my previous suggestion first.”</p><p>        “Clubbing each other over the head?”</p><p>        “<em>The one before that.</em>”</p><p>        “Oh, right.  Talk to Rita.  Got it.”</p><p>        “<em>Are you sure?</em>”</p><p>        “Actually, could you write that down for me, doc?  Just so I don’t forget.”</p><p>        If this exchange didn’t convince Nefarious enough that perhaps robots <em>were</em> fully autonomous individuals, he wasn’t sure what else would. </p><p>        Artificial intelligence was something that indeed could be constructed, but artificial stupidity?  There was no such thing.  Even a genius couldn’t purposely program stupid.  That sort of thing had a life of its own.</p>
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